"I don't believe the American people should ever be told any
lies, publicly or privately," Ayn
Rand testified under oath before Congress in October 1947,
adding that "I don't believe that lies are practical". I don't believe that the morale of
anybody can be built up by a lie."

That's the same Ayn Rand who continues to have significant
influence on American political life, with devoted followers on the libertarian
right, including Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, now the Republican
nominee for Vice President. Ryan,
whose political career began while he was still in college, spoke at the Atlas Society's "Celebration
of Ayn Rand" and said
in 2005, "the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I
had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."

In the fall of 1947, in a series of hearings on Communist
Party activities in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, the House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) called Rand to testify as one of
several a so-called "friendly" witnesses, that also included Gary Cooper and
Ronald Reagan
(who was by then also an FBI informant). A number of the "unfriendly" witnesses, later known as the Hollywood
Ten, ended up going to jail, as did the committee chair. Others were blacklisted.

Rand was then a screen writer under contract at Warner Brothers, where she
had writer credits on two popular romantic comedies -- You Came
Along (July 1945) and

Love Letters
(Oct. 1945), which had four Academy Award nominations (best
actress, art direction, original song, and score). Rand had been born in Russia in 1905 as Alisa
Rosenbaum, and lived under Soviet rule till she came to the U.S. in 1926. She
had written Anthem,
the autobiographical novel of her fabled escape from the Soviet Union,
published in England in 1938, as well as the novel that made her famous in 1943
when it was published in the United States, The Fountainhead.

The bulk of her HUAC testimony was her assessment of the
ways MGM's Song
of Russia (1943) served as Soviet propaganda, but she also revealed a
bit of the truth behind her own growing personal legend.

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"First of all I would like to define what we mean by
propaganda," Rand told the committee.
"Nobody has stated just what they mean by propaganda. Now, I use the
term to mean that Communist propaganda is anything which gives a good
impression of communism as a way of life. Anything that sells people the idea
that life in Russia is good and that people are free and happy would be
Communist propaganda."

Song of Russia, produced
in 1943, during the Nazi the siege of Leningrad,
presents a Hollywood fantasy of Russia in 1941, a unlikely love story between a
Russian peasant girl and an American orchestra conductor, built around the
music of Tchaikovsky lots of
peasants smiling. "It is one of
the stock propaganda tricks of the Communists, to show these people smiling,"
Rand explained, adding that it was ridiculous "that an American conductor had
accepted an invitation to come there and conduct a concert, and this took place
in 1941 when Stalin was the ally of Hitler."

Having clearly articulated the propaganda aspects of the
movie, Rand went on to wonder why an American movie would incorporate Soviet
propaganda:

Now,
here is what I cannot understand at all: if the excuse that has been given here
is that we had to produce the picture in wartime, just how can it help the war
effort? If it is to deceive the American people, if it were to present to the
American people a better picture of Russia than it really is, then that sort of
an attitude is nothing but the theory of the Nazi elite -- that a choice group
of intellectual or other leaders will tell the people lies for their own good".

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We
do not have to deceive the people at any time, in war or peace. If it was to
please the Russians, I don't see how you can please the Russians by telling
them that we are fools". We don't win anybody's friendship. We will only win
their contempt, and as you know the Russians have been behaving like this.

Committee member Rep. John S, Wood (D-GA) suggested that the
movie was needed to maintain Russian morale to keep them from being knocked out
of the war, as they had been in the First World War. In that circumstance, he asked: "there is a pretty strong
probability that we wouldn't have won it at all, isn't there?"

Rand would have none of it: "what relation could a lie about
Russia have with the war effort? I would like to have somebody explain that to
me, because I really don't understand it, why a lie would help anybody or why
it would keep Russia in or out of the war. How?"

When Wood persisted, Rand pushed back harder:

RAND: I don't believe the American people should ever be told any
lies, publicly or privately. I don't believe that lies are practical".I don't think
it was necessary to deceive the American people about the nature of Russia. I
could add this: if those who saw it say it was quite all right, and perhaps
there are reasons why it was all right to be an ally of Russia, then why
weren't the American people told the real reasons and told that Russia is a
dictatorship but there are reasons why we should cooperate with them to destroy
Hitler and other dictators? All right, there may be some argument to that. Let
us hear it. But of what help can it be to the war effort to tell people that we
should associate with Russia and that she is not a dictatorship?

WOOD: Let me see if I understand your position. I understand, from
what you say, that because they were a dictatorship we shouldn't have accepted
their help in undertaking to win a war against another dictatorship.

RAND: That is not what I said. I was not in a position to make that
decision. If I were, I would tell you what I would do. That is not what we are
discussing. We are discussing the fact that our country was an ally of Russia,
and the question is: what should we tell the American people about it -- the
truth or a lie? If we had good reason, if that is what you believe, all right,
then why not tell the truth? Say it is a dictatorship, but we want to be
associated with it. Say it is worthwhile being associated with the devil, as
Churchill said, in order to defeat another evil which is Hitler. There might be
some good argument made for that. But why pretend that Russia was not what it
was?

WOOD: Well --

RAND: What do you achieve by that?

WOOD: Do you think it would have had as good an effect upon the
morale of the American people to preach a doctrine to them that Russia was on
the verge of collapse?

RAND: I don't believe that the morale of anybody can be built up by
a lie. If there was nothing good that we could truthfully say about Russia,
then it would have been better not to say anything at all.

WOOD: Well --

RAND: You don't have to come out and denounce Russia during the
war; no. You can keep quiet. There is no moral guilt in not saying something if
you can't say it, but there is in saying the opposite of what is true.

Paul Ryan first denied requiring his staff to read Ayn Rand
when the story broke in April 2012, calling his devotion to her "an urban
legend." "I reject her
philosophy," Ryan told the National
Review firmly. "It's an atheist philosophy."

The National Review story -- with the headline: "Ryan isn't a
Randian -- Refuting the Left's favorite charge against Paul Ryan" -- did not
explain why Ryan in 2005 told
the Atlas Society:

I
just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she
meant to me in my life and [in] the fight we're engaged here in Congress. I
grew up on Ayn Rand, that's what I tell people". I grew up
reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what
my value systems are, and what my beliefs are".

It's
inspired me so much that it's required reading in my office for all my interns
and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged. People tell me I need to start
with The Fountainhead then go to Atlas Shrugged [laughter].
There's a big debate about that. We go to Fountainhead, but then we move
on, and we require Mises and Hayek as well".

But
the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit
one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand". Because there is no better
place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than
through Ayn Rand's writings and works."

In 2009, Ryan posted a video of himself talking about Ayn
Rand on Facebook. Also that year
he commented
in regard to Obama's policies, "It is the morality of what is occurring right
now, and how it offends the morality of individuals working toward their own
free will to produce, to achieve, to succeed, that is under attack, and it is
that what I think Ayn Rand would be commenting on."

After Rep. Wood gave up questioning Rand at the HUAC
hearing, Rep. John McDowell (R-PA)
had a brief colloquy with her about the smiling habits of Russians. Then, he asked, "Did You escape prom
Russia?"

Ayn Rand's "escape from Russia" remains part of her legend,
but her answer to the question under oath was simply, "No."

McDowell tried again: "Did you have a passport?"

"Strangely enough, they gave me a passport to come out here
as a visitor," Rand answered, apparently meaning that she came to the US on a
tourist visa: "I had some
relatives here and I was permitted to come here for a year. I never went back."

Perhaps realizing that Ayn Rand had been an illegal alien
(she was naturalized as a citizen in 1931), McDowell said only, "I see."

The chairman invited further questions. The freshman Congressman from
California, Republican Richard M. Nixon said, "No questions," and the hearing
was over.

Vermonter living in Woodstock:
elected to five terms (served 20 years) as side judge (sitting in Superior, Family, and Small Claims Courts);
public radio producer, "The Panther Program" -- nationally distributed, three albums (at CD Baby), some (more...)